Sunday, July 8, 2012

Oswald, Kennedy, and Envy

I don’t think anyone was involved in the murder of Kennedy except Oswald, and I think he did it out of envy.

Oswald was a loser. He had failed at everything he tried. Kennedy was good-looking, wealthy, an adored President, and had a beautiful and elegant wife – and he didn’t he really didn’t have to try very hard to get these things. Some of them he was born with.

Oswald had none of these things and I’m sure didn’t think this disparity was fair. So he decided to rectify the matter.

Oswald was consumed with his envy of Kennedy, so to bring Kennedy down Oswald killed him. By this murder Oswald become immortal – when people say the name “Oswald” every American knows who it refers to, just the way Americans know who is meant by the names Cher, Elvis and Arnold.

By the way, the German word “achtung” means both “respect” and “attention.” The easiest way to gain attention – and an ersatz form of respect, at least to the more dull-witted – is through violence.

The German philosopher Hegel was of the opinion that those who did not have the talent or temperament for constructive achievements substituted destructive behavior. That destructive behavior was a cheap, easy way for such people to bring attention to themselves.

Envious people always feel humiliated and ashamed, although they cannot admit it to themselves. They want to replace their feelings of shame with pride.

The psychiatrist James Gilligan, who spent 25 years dealing with murderers, concluded, “the basic psychological motive, or cause, of violent behavior is the wish to ward off or eliminate the feeling of shame and humiliation - a feeling that is painful and can even be intolerable and overwhelming and replace it with its opposite, the feeling of pride.”

Oswald, consumed with envy and feelings of shame and humiliation, bought down Kennedy by murdering him, and so became immortal.